performance limiter...

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More traction. When you accelerate, the weight gets transferred backwards giving more grip to the rear tyres.

All things being equal for cars above a certain power level you will get a better lap time with drive to the rear. That's why they used to have RWD weight penalties in touring cars for the BMWs.

FWD wasn't supposed to be better or faster, just safer. Early FWD cars probably were more controllable than the fishtailing RWD deathtraps they replaced (old Vauxhall Cavalier, that kind of thing). Everything has moved on a long way since then.

But does that make FWD less 'dangerous' than RWD?

No matter what car you drive if you slam the

I've heard the arguments supporting that view, but I've yet to be convinced.. Mike.

& you get rather more cabin space for the same size car.

Yes, and boot space since there isn't a diff at the back.

Most of the cars you see driving around are essentially giant Minis. It was a very good design so everyone copied it.

With FWD you hit the hedge with the front

With RWD you hit the hedge with the back

With 4WD you take the hedge halfway across the field with you...

Maybe, but I suspect the average car *you* have around you in your daily life is a bit more than 'nippy' by anyone elses standards...

Well of course it was the bloody suspension on those old cars that stopped them going round corners at any decent speed. It wasn't the colour of the carpet in the front passenger footwell or the nodding dog on the rear parcel shelf!

However I'm grateful to you for clearing that up for readers who may have been confused by me calling them s**te with regards to cornering that I was talking about parts of the car that didn't actually influence the cornering.

Or to put it another way. With FWD you see what you're about to hit. With RWD you don't.

But it is considered safer in sudden stops, to sit with your back to the direction of travel. Therefore RWD is safer. :-) Mike.

Mark 1 Cavalier handled pretty well, tended towards too much understeer if anything (unless abused).

So why are there so many whiplash claims from rear impacts?

If you habe an accident and see anyone rubbing their neck, you should photograph the badly adjusted head restraint to counter claim contributory negligence.

"It must have got moved in the accident, mlud!"

The car should also dissipate some energy when spinning. ;-)

In what way could a type of car that's inherently less easy to lose control of not also be called safer?

"Ben C" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@bowser.marioworld...

Indeed. I remember doing a 180 on a wet roundabout in my Mum's Capri without haven given it what I'd call the slightest provocation. It simply decided it wanted to go back the way we'd just come apparently. I also recall a horrendous fish tailing incident in her Viva one night, which admittedly I did provoke a tad, when I turned off a main road onto a side one a bit too fast and the back end went in the wet. I corrected, it stepped out the other way, I corrected, it stepped back out the original way and this repeated for what seemed like forever as a lamp post loomed up in the average direction we were slidding towards. Luckily I finally got the evil thing back under control in the nick of time but it was more by luck than judgement.

I have to say though that my own 1275 Marina, once it had Spax adjustables all round and decent 185/70 Dunlop tyres rather than the pathetic skinny things it came with, was quite a handy little tool which I actually have fond memories of. It never turned round and bit me, gripped at least as well as anything else of its era and was even rather well balanced in corners. Once I'd also stuck a ported big valve head, twin SUs and exhaust manifold and system on it it showed a clean pair of heels to cars with much bigger engines like 2 litre Cortinas. I saw 110 mph on the clock a couple of times which was not bad going for a car that wouldn't do 90 when it was stock. It finally went to the great Marina home in the sky in 1984 when I came into enough money to buy a 'state of the art' Astra GTE but for the few years I owned it I had great fun.

Compared to my current Focus though all of the above are little more than stone age tools. The biggest change is in camber control. The Focus's ability to both ride the bumps comfortably but also keep the tyre treads flat to the road under cornering makes it capable of pulling G forces that those 1970's cars with their live rear axles and awful front suspensions could only have dreamed of. That's without bringing modern tyres into the equation which I'm guessing have something like 15% more grip than those of

30 years ago, especially in the wet. Any car that could pull 0.8g in the dry back then was considered pretty damn good. Nowadays that's only par for the course in the wet.

With modern tyres and suspension, traction control, anti lock brakes and even ESP like my Focus you have to be doing something pretty damn stupid to lose control of a modern car, even in the wet. God knows I've tried hard enough in the Focus but the ESP just kicks in and saves me every time. Its ability to recover in an eyeblink from situations I think are terminal is astonishing. I lost the back end in the wet chasing a big motorbike one night at something crazy like 75 mph in a kink I knew perfectly well was only doable at about 60 unless it was bone dry and there was a car coming the other way which I had no chance of avoiding with my own driving skill. The ESP did something I can only imagine at, lights went on on the dash, the power dropped for a split second, I think it probably put one or more of the brakes on briefly and the moment was past. The back end just kicked back into line before I even had a chance to react and without that I doubt I'd be typing this now. I'd have flailed away pathetically at the steering wheel and hit either the other car at a combined speed of about 120 mph or shot off the road into the trees and 30 foot drop that would also have killed me just as efficiently. I suppose it could lull you into a false sense of security eventually and when you did eventually crash you'd be going at a hell of a speed which wouldn't be good but it's by far the safest car I've ever owned.

If I had to lose any of the driving aids that modern cars have the last of them to go would be the ESP. I can live without anti lock brakes happily enough, if the suspension and tyres are crap you just drive slower but those moments that kill you tend to be when you're only going a tad faster than your own abilities can control but the ESP can handle without even trying hard. The difference between losing control completely and not even realising you were about to die is usually only a matter of a couple of mph. The ESP gives you those back when you make a misjudgement of your own abilities.

There is still the question, why are there so many more holes in hedgerows these days than 20 years ago? It takes years for hedges to grow back if ever and most of the damage is very recent.

30 years ago 150bhp was a very powerful and usually expensive car. An early 80's 2L Ford wouldn't make much more than 100bhp, needed a V6 2.8i to get 160bhp. By the end of the 80's there were smaller cars cars making 130bhp, like the BX GTi or Sunny 1.8ZX coupe and even the 1.6s were knocking on 100bhp. These days it's common to get 150bhp+ in FWD and 200bhp doesn't cut it in RWD.

FWD tends to run wide when understeering and as left handers are always tighter it puts them onto the wrong side of the road. Simple choice, head on or the hedge.

Still doesn't explain all the holes in the hedge along a near straight road.

Red Mist eh? I thought you would be a little old for that ;)

Mrcheerful

Nobody bothers layering hedges anymore?

There aren't. Road safety has improved more or less steadily year on year since the car was invented.

Which is easier to control. A front wheel skid or a rear wheel skid?

Given the same degree of competence by the driver of either a FWD or RWD car, I don't think it can be argued that FWD is inherently safer.

IMO a driver who has no experience of RWD is just as likely to get into trouble with a RWD car, as one who has no experience of FWD cars.

As a driver who had only driven RWD cars for decades. I found my first experience of driving a FWD car most disconcerting to say the least. Compared to the RWD cars I'd driven, it just didn't want to go round corners at a comparable speed without excessive u/s.

On a wet or greasy surface it was easily provoked into a front wheel skid, at a speed below that which I was used to with RWD. I had to conciously drive slower around bends, otherwise I knew I'd be in trouble, which is why the first and last FWD car I've ever owned, was sold after only about 3 months.

The car BTW was an Audi 100. Maybe not the best example of a FWD car, but driving much newer FWD cars has not changed my opinion. I still don't want to own one. Mike.